Duncan Campbell's BBC video documentary series Secret Society (1987):
2. In Time Of Crisis: Government Emergency Powers.
Since 1982, governments in every other NATO country have been preparing for the eventuality of war.
In Britain, these preparations are kept secret.
So what will happen when the balloon goes up?

You can see an aeriel and drive past the gates of the NATO weapons dump referred to in the youtube clip.

Just pan out a bit from Tulloch Road (satellite) and scroll south east a little and you can see the bunkers and tracks. Then zoom in.

Then lock the coordinates into your Tie Fighter, feel the force Luke and wait for a fantastic firework display or possibly separate Scotland from England_________________JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12

Ok, this video by Ron Paul was posted on YouTube in mid-November last year, and its relevance to likely food shortages as a result of a Dollar collapse (which has been on the cards for the past few years now) and hence Martial Law cannot be taken lightly.

Link_________________"The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity to which others are trying to prove him[her] wrong."
- - Harry Segall
"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves." Lenin 1917

A massive earthquake. A giant tsunami. Escalating turmoil in the Middle East. Unusual energy in the Milky Way. Dire predictions about the end of the world next year. Put all of that together and, if you are in the underground bunker business, your business is booming.

"I thought I cleared my in-box last night," Camden says. "Shoot, there were 37 more today."

It appears there is a run on fallout and bomb shelters lately. Many people in California are worried about nuclear radiation from the earthquake damaged reactors in Japan. Camden says he is seeing an increase in orders for the Nuclear, Radiation, Biological (NBC) tents that he sells. They are not cheap at $9,500 each.

Most of his customers, however, are ordering fortified homes with underground storage, living space and escape tunnels. But it is not nuclear radiation or terrorist with weapons of mass destruction most clients are worried about.

"Nuclear Armageddon went out with the collapse of the Soviet Union," Camden tells ABC News. "Fifty-five per cent of our work is geared toward economic collapse."

His most popular items look just like regular houses, but they are built to withstand being hit with rounds from an AK-47 and are fire-resistant. They also come with an underground bunker pre-stocked with food and supplies. They usually include an emergency escape tunnel. These structures, apparently, are big sellers either as primary residences or, says Camden, "as vacation homes." Other underground bunker companies are seeing the same kind of increase in business, especially as Dec. 21, 2012 draws nearer. That is the day the world is supposed to end. At least, that is what a lot of people who believe in the Mayan calendar say.

Camden says the underground, reinforced concrete facilities his company designs and builds "are primarily 2012, end-of-the-world-as-you-know-it kind of stuff." He calls that his biggest product "with regard to blast over pressure." Hardened Structures is currently building six of them, from South Africa to Colorado.

Another company, Vivos, which says it builds large underground complexes, is capitalizing on 2012 mania with a web site that is actually counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to "the end of times." Camden can probably thank NASA and the European Space Agency for some of the uptick in his business. He says the Fermi Space Telescope captured images of a very large concentration of energy in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. It was energy that many experts had said was not suppose to be there. Combine that discovery with the belief by some that the equators of the earth and sun will line up with the Milky Way on 12/21/12, Camden says, "So, now you have the 2012 people saying, I told you so." And his phone began to ring off the hook.

Does he believe the world is soon to end? He has what he calls a very simple philosophy. "The client's priorities," Camden says, "are our priorities. We don't subscribe to any kind of scenario. After doing it for 20 years, " he adds, " the only thing we know for sure, is that no one knows what's going to happen."

Stocking up for Doomsday: As economists predict meltdown, meet the families ready for the worst

By Tom Rawstorne - 17th December 2011

Picture the scene: It’s the end of January 2012 and already it is clear the year to come will make that which has just passed seem something of a picnic. The last strains of Auld Lang Syne had barely faded before Greece defaulted on its debts. Over the next few weeks, Italy and Spain will follow.

Across Britain and the Continent, bank after bank goes down, a domino effect exacerbated by panicking customers desperately withdrawing their savings. Where three years ago the giants of High Street banking were seen as too big too fail, now they are too big and too many for any Government to save.

Panic ensues. Within hours, the cashpoints are empty of money and the supermarket shelves stripped bare.

To make matters worse the country is hit by freezing weather. As temperatures plummet and snow falls, the road network stalls to a grinding halt, while large swathes of the country are hit by electricity blackouts.

The warning by economists that Britain is just ‘nine meals from anarchy’ is brutally borne out. Unlike last summer, the rioters on the streets aren’t looking for trainers and flat-screen TVs — just food.

An absurd fantasy? Perhaps so, but in an increasingly uncertain world, such a scenario can no longer be dismissed out of hand. And strange as it may seem, it’s one that many believe is worth preparing for.

Across the country, steps are being taken to cope with such a situation. But not by central or local government. Their contingency planning for such an emergency is focused on the most important and most vulnerable in society.

Instead it is ordinary people who are taking action: stockpiling their larders with non-perishable food, buying water-purifying pumps and camping stoves.

While five years ago such behaviour might have been dismissed as the activities of ‘end-of-the-world’ eccentrics, those doing so today are professionals from every walk of life.

Companies selling freeze-dried food rations, sealed in giant air-tight multi-serving tins and with a shelf-life of 25 years, have seen sales soar in recent months — increasing ten-fold compared to previous years.

Most popular are the packs of instant meals that will keep a family of four going for three months once water is added. At around £1,500 they are not cheap. But many of those buying these emergency rations see them as a wise investment — and they are well-placed to make such a judgment.

‘It is not “crazies” buying this,’ says James Blake, whose company Emergency Food Storage specialises in freeze-dried foods. ‘We get a lot of high-powered business people as customers. Most people buy insurance for their health, their house or their life — this is food insurance.

‘Of course, we hope it never happens, but if there is a major catastrophe, then money is not going to be worth much after a couple of days. It will be food that becomes the most needed thing.’

Dave Hannah and his company B-Prep sell similar products. He says a number of his customers are bankers. Their average spend is £3,000.

Of course, that might just be sales talk: stoking paranoia to boost company profits.

But there’s no doubt some families are stocking up in preparation for harsh times ahead. Among them is 51-year-old Lynda Mayall from Poole in Dorset.

The divorced mother-of-four — she has 17-year-old twin girls and boys aged 18 and 19 — has suffered since the credit crunch took hold.

She was forced to close her domestic cleaning company and now teaches English as a foreign language and helps to train counsellors.

Her work is intermittent — while she had a two-month contract in the summer she is currently surviving on a few hours’ work a week. As a result, she has become acutely aware of how important it is to have sufficient food stored to feed her family.

As well as buying several hundred pounds worth of freeze-dried ‘survival’ meals, her cupboards contain more than 100 tins of beans, fish, soup and vegetables. She also has stocks of pasta and rice.

‘I think I have about a six-month supply of food in the house,’ she says. ‘The freeze-dried tins are great because they take up so much less space. It is something we can fall back on if times are tough. It is my security blanket.’ Miss Mayall says her stockpiling instinct has been sharpened by the way in which the European crisis is unfolding.

‘I think there is every possibility that we could see problems around the availability of food,’ she says.

‘We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I’m not totally pessimistic and I do have faith in the Government, but I have more faith in my store cupboard. I know we’ll have food in times of trouble.’

A wise precaution or an over- reaction? Either way, in recent years, a series of events have served to highlight the fragility of the infrastructure of developed First World countries in the 21st century.

Take the fuel strikes of 2000. Lorry drivers, fed up with high diesel prices, blockaded the refineries. Almost immediately they exposed the frailties of a society that feeds itself via a just-in-time supply chain.

Within days, shelves were bare and supermarket bosses were warning civil servants in Whitehall that there were just three days of food left.

Then there was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Within days, residents of the richest country in the world were looting to feed themselves and their families.

Next came the credit crunch and that day in September 2008 when the Royal Bank of Scotland almost folded. It would subsequently emerge that its cash machines were only hours away from running out of money.

You may have money in the bank, but what if you can’t get to it, and food shops — fearful of a major bank defaulting — refuse to take anything except cash?

And, finally, who can forget the shattering blows suffered by Japan this year? First, an earthquake and tsunami and then a nuclear disaster.

Of course, many will dismiss these as freak events that happen once in a blue moon. But they all demonstrate how after decades of plenty, modern man has never been less prepared for the unexpected.

With food and oil prices rising, and countries struggling to cope with crippling debt, few predict anything but instability in the years to come.

Mr Blake set up Emergency Food Storage in Leeds in 2009. He took his lead from the U.S., where the idea of ‘self-preparedness’ is mainstream.

‘The American attitude is very different and the government there encourages people to be prepared,’ he says. ‘They see that civil unrest could follow a major disaster. If they encourage people to have food and water it will stave off that civil unrest while they put the infrastructure back on line.’

But in Britain, he says, people remain worryingly blasé about the ease with which they can get food and no longer feel the need to stockpile even basic supplies.

‘Think what’s in your cupboards and imagine if for six weeks you couldn’t get food — it might be due to snow or whatever — how would you survive?’ he says. ‘The vast majority of people will find they have only enough to last a week. Be a little more prepared is what we are saying.’

People remain worryingly blasé about the ease with which they can get food and no longer feel the need to stockpile even basic supplies

While the simplest way to do this has been to stock up on canned and dried produce, freeze-dried foods are increasingly popular. The major player in the industry is a company called Mountain House, a U.S. brand that started manufacturing in Britain five years ago.

In the past year alone, sales of its tins of food with a 25-year shelf-life have increased by 350 per cent. The contents of these tins are similar to the sachets of foods that mountaineers and other outward-bounds types might be familiar with. But because they are in cans, rather than packets, they last for 25 years, rather than five.

They are created by cooking a normal meal, such as spaghetti bolognaise, and then freezing it rapidly. Finally, the water content is extracted under pressure, a process known as sublimation.

Freeze-drying preserves the taste of the food as well as up to 97 per cent of its nutritional value. It also massively reduces its weight and bulk. For example, 1,000kg of strawberries reduces to 100kg of freeze-dried fruit. The meals are returned to near-enough their original state by adding water (preferably hot, but cold will do).

But because the process is energy-intensive, the food is not cheap.

EFS is selling 72 tins of Mountain House food for £2,199.95. This is billed as a deluxe 12-month survival pack of 450 meals.

B-Prep, a London-based company, has experienced similar levels of demand, with orders tripling in the past year. Its founder, Dave Hannah, stresses that he does not foresee some ‘apocalyptic annihilation’ befalling Britain, but that stockpiling enough food for between three days and a month is a sensible way to prepare for a possible crisis.

‘Two generations ago, people would have had that supply in their larders anyway,’ he says. ‘It’s just going back to that. It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.’

That’s certainly the view taken by 54-year-old George Shaw, a company director. He lives in East Sussex with his wife Karen, 47, and their two sons, aged 13 and 11. He estimates he has enough food stored to last a year. ‘I have a large shed and keep different types of canned food,’ says Mr Shaw. ‘We buy baked beans and tinned tomatoes in trays of 24 from a cut-price trade warehouse. I’ve no idea exactly how many cans I have in there, but there must be hundreds.

‘In the kitchen, we have a large freezer that’s full to the brim, and two large fridges. I buy at least four cartons of milk at a time and freeze them. It gives me a feeling of safety to know we could live for a year on our stockpile.’

His instinct to stock up is, in part, inspired by a desire to economise by bulk buying. But, he says, recent world events have also made him more cautious. ‘I think the last recession in 2008 did make many people more aware that the supermarket stocks might not last for ever, though I think it’s more likely that our food supplies would be affected by a terrorist attack,’ he says.

‘After 9/11, I stocked up on water, just in case someone had the bright idea of bombing our reservoirs. I think in the New Year people in general may become more thrifty and buy in bulk, just as we do. It makes economic sense, and it means you won’t be caught out if the economy suddenly shrinks.’

Of course, with the cost of food rising dramatically every year, buying now and storing for later makes financial sense. And at the same time it need not cost a fortune.

For the past 18 months, Chris James, a 40-year-old business consultant from Manchester, has bought an extra can of baked beans and one litre of water every time he goes to the supermarket.

‘I think there is a chance, a remote chance, that the supply chain will break down badly,’ he says.

‘For less than £1 a week I’m able to fill my garage with baked beans and water. It’s a tiny outlay for what could be a great benefit.

‘To be honest, I don’t particularly like beans, so I hope I never have to eat them. But they are nutritious and if it comes to the point that I do, I guess I’ll be grateful for anything.’

Having a sense of perspective on the potential risks is something emphasised by Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London. The highly respected academic says that while the danger of widespread food shortages should not be exaggerated, he was not surprised that people are starting to prepare for that eventuality.

‘This is a sign of the times — the tectonic plates of capitalism are wobbling pretty seriously,’ he says.

‘The general attitude in the country is: “Oh my goodness, this is not about others, it is about us, too.” People are feeling agitated and threatened and nervous.

"Our food is under threat. It is felt by every family farmer who has lost their land and livelihood, every parent who can't find affordable or healthy ingredients in their neighborhood, every person worried about foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened food safety laws, every farmworker who faces toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work."

Our food is under threat. It is felt by every family farmer who has lost their land and livelihood, every parent who can't find affordable or healthy ingredients in their neighborhood, every person worried about foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened food safety laws, every farmworker who faces toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work.

When our food is at risk we are all at risk.

Over the last thirty years, we have witnessed a massive consolidation of our food system. Never have so few corporations been responsible for more of our food chain. Of the 40,000 food items in a typical U.S. grocery store, more than half are now brought to us by just 10 corporations. Today, three companies process more than 70 percent of all U.S. beef, Tyson, Cargill and JBS. More than 90 percent of soybean seeds and 80 percent of corn seeds used in the United States are sold by just one company: Monsanto. Four companies are responsible for up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. And one in four food dollars is spent at Walmart.

What does this matter for those of us who eat? Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, the destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of our water, and health epidemics including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms of cancer. More and more, the choices that determine the food on our shelves are made by corporations concerned less with protecting our health, our environment, or our jobs than with profit margins and executive bonuses.

This consolidation also fuels the influence of concentrated economic power in politics: Last year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more than $37 million used in the fight against junk food marketing guidelines for kids.

On a global scale, the consolidation of our food system has meant devastation for farmers, forests and the climate. Take the controversial food additive palm oil. In the past decade, palm oil has become the most widely traded vegetable oil in the world and is now found in half of all packaged goods on U.S. grocery store shelves. But the large-scale production of palm oil - driven by agribusiness demand for the relatively cheap ingredient - has come at a cost: palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are razing rainforests, releasing massive quantities of greenhouse gases and displacing Indigenous communities.

From the global to the local, nothing is more personal than this threat to our food. And nothing more inspiring than the movement that is fighting back. On Monday February 27, tens of thousands of people - including farmers and food workers, parents and students, urban gardeners and chefs - will participate in a Global Day of Action to Occupy our Food Supply.

Occupy our Food Supply is a day to both resist Big Food and highlight sustainable solutions that work for all of us. On February 27, more than 60Occupy groups as well as environmental and corporate accountability organizations are joining together. From Brazil, Hungary, Ireland, Argentina, the United States and beyond, people will be reclaiming unused bank-owned lots to create community gardens; hosting seed exchanges in front of stock exchanges; labeling products on grocery store shelves that contain genetically engineered ingredients; building community alliances to support locally owned grocery stores and resist Walmart megastores; and fighting back against industrial giants Monsanto and Cargill.

As Michael Ableman, farmer, author, and founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture puts it: "We need to focus on what we are for as much as what we are against; occupying our land, our soils with life and fertility, our communities with good food. We need to work to rebuild the real economy, the one based on seeds and sunlight and individuals and communities growing together."

(CNN) -- Recent ballistic missile tests by India, Pakistan and North Korea -- which has ominously threatened to "reduce to ashes" the South Korean military "in minutes" -- are once again focusing the world's attention on the dangers of nuclear war.

This concern was dramatically underscored in a new report released at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Chicago. Titled "Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk" (PDF), the study shows that even a limited nuclear war, involving less than half of 1% of the world's nuclear arsenals, would cause climate disruption that could set off a global famine.http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/nuclear-famine-report.pdf

The study, prepared by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, used a scenario of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs exploded in a war between India and Pakistan. If there were such a war, the study estimated that 1 billion people, one-sixth of the human race, could starve over the following decade.

Along with recent events, these findings require a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter and Facebook.com/cnnopinion

Jayantha Dhanapala

Ira Helfand

The study, in positing a war between India and Pakistan, shows the importance of understanding that smaller nuclear powers, not just the United States and Russia, pose a threat to the whole world.

But the greater lesson concerns the forces of the larger nuclear powers. Each U.S. Trident submarine can destroy 100 cities and produce the global famine described in the study. The United States has 14 of them, a fleet of land-based nuclear missiles, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons that can be delivered by bombers. The Russians possess the same grotesque overkill capacity.

Even the most ambitious arms reductions under discussion would leave the United States and Russia with 300 warheads each, most of them 10 to 30 times larger than a Hiroshima sized bomb. This would be a massive arsenal capable of producing the global famine scenario many, many times over.

These arsenals are an archaic, but lethal, holdover from the Cold War. Their continued existence poses an ongoing threat to all humanity.

Steps can and should be taken immediately to lessen this danger. Substantial numbers of these weapons remain on what The New York Times has described as "hair-trigger alert." They can be fired in 15 minutes or less and destroy cities a continent away 30 minutes later. This alert posture creates the needless danger of an accidental or unintended launch, and the United States and Russia have had many close calls, preparing to launch a nuclear strike at the other under the mistaken belief they were under attack.

The most recent of these near-misses that we know about took place in January 1995, well after the end of the Cold War. The United States and Russia should stand down their nuclear arsenals so that it takes longer to launch their missiles, lessening the danger of an accidental war. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladamir Putin can take this step on their own without negotiating a formal treaty.

Beyond this, it is time to begin urgent talks aimed at reducing the U.S. and Russian arsenals as the next essential step toward multilateral negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a binding, verifiable, enforceable treaty that eliminates nuclear weapons altogether.

As former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev observed on reviewing the new "Nuclear Famine" study: "I am convinced that nuclear weapons must be abolished. Their use in a military conflict is unthinkable; using them to achieve political objectives is immoral.

"Over 25 years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I ended our summit meeting in Geneva with a joint statement that 'Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,' and this new study underscores in stunning and disturbing detail why this is the case."

Think they may have been testing it out the other night. All my router lights were on green but couldnt connect to the net for an hour or so._________________JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12

Here’s a list of 10 Principles of Preparedness in the order of their prioritization. Try as you may, you’ll be hard pressed to switch their order of influence in your life. Ensuring that you address all of them with the proper level of prioritization, will give you a balanced self-reliance result:

1: Spiritual Preparedness: Your core values and belief system will be the first point of strength in the face of any challenge and will no doubt determine how you respond to those challenges.

2: Mental Preparedness: Your level of knowledge, skills, and fortitude to endure a challenge will be closely linked with the first Principle of Preparedness. All of the tools and supplies and protections in the world won’t help a person without the mental ability to exercise the use thereof.

3: Physical Preparedness: Your level of physical mobility, fitness, and how you’ve prepared to address your physical vulnerabilities is crucial. A fitness guru can be just as compromised as a person who’s seriously overweight if they lack the muscle memory, dexterity, and physical skills needed to travel or defend themselves in the face of a challenge.

4: Medical Preparedness: Something as simple as a hang-nail, minor scrape, or running out of critical medication has killed a person more than once. Preparing for such instances in the form of first-aid knowledge, alternative methods of care, battle field triage skills, and stocking up on essential first aid supplies can eliminate a host of unpleasant possibilities.

5: Clothing/Shelter Preparedness: Personal and structural soundness, safety, and protection. You may think of water as more important than most anything, but you can perish from heat exhaustion or freezing to death much sooner than you will thirst. How will you control your environment if you lack the luxury of electricity or gas?

6: Fuel Preparedness: Light, heat, travel, cooking, sanitizing, and environmental control all require some form or another of fuel—whether it be your own physical energy or that provided by a resource such as propane, batteries, or wood. Do you have alternative resources along with the equipment to use such resources?

7: Water Preparedness: While it’s not accurate that 72 hours without water will kill a person, it is accurate that 72 hours without water will begin to damage vital organs in the body. Be sure you have reliable water sources in your shelter, easily accessed, as well as plans for filtering and treating other resources of water.

8: Food Preparedness: Be sure that you also have the knowledge and resources to prepare and serve food with absorbable nutrition. Simply storing food is only the first step. True self-reliance only comes in this area when you’re able to produce food as well. Also, don’t underestimate the need for familiar foods for your family, as well as comfort food.

9: Financial Preparedness: Ridding yourself of debt and having the ability to purchase what you need under a wide set of circumstances is critical, as is having 6 months reserve of your monthly income and setting aside items with which to barter.

10: Communication Preparedness: When trouble strikes, the first thing you want to know is that your friends and loved ones are well, however, there are many circumstances in which your traditions communication methods are compromised, so prepare for alternatives. Coordinating efforts, commerce, and safety are also compromised without sufficient low-tech communication alternatives.

In case INTERNET GOES DOWN: Have a laptop, modem or a phone that has bluetooth.. 1-Connect the phone to the laptop via bluetooth then right click and choose “use as modem” if you didn’t have modem. 2-Go to Network and choose “create new dial up connection” 3-When asked to enter a phone number, user name and password, use one of the following. They can’t cut them off 00494923197844321 User:Telecomix Pass:Telecomix 00597110844 User:freeisp@internet Pass:internet 00537110844 User:isp@dialup Pass:connect

15. Food Riots: The New Normal?
Reduced land productivity, combined with elevated oil costs and population growth, threaten a systemic, global food crisis. Citing findings from a study by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, published by the Royal Society, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed identified the links among intensifying economic inequality, debt, climate change, and fossil fuel dependency to conclude that a global food crisis is now “undeniable.”
http://www.projectcensored.org/15-food-riots-new-normal/
“Global food prices have been consistently higher than in preceding decades,” reported Ahmed, leading to dramatic price increases in staple foods and triggering food riots across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. The crux of this global phenomenon is climate change: severe natural disasters including drought, flood, heat waves, and monsoons have affected major regional food baskets. By mid-century, Ahmed reported, “world crop yields could fall as much as 20–40 percent because of climate change alone.”
Industrial agricultural methods that disrupt soil have also contributed to impending food shortages. As a result, Ahmed reported, global land productivity has “dropped significantly,” from 2.1 percent during 1950–90 to 1.2 percent during 1990–2007.
By contrast with Ahmed’s report, corporate media coverage of food insecurity has tended to treat it as a local and episodic problem. For example, an April 2008 story in the Los Angeles Times covered food riots in Haiti, which resulted in three deaths. Similarly, a March 2013 New York Times piece addressed how the loss of farmland and farm labor to urbanization contributed to rising food costs in China. Corporate media have not connected the dots to analyze how intensifying inequality, debt, climate change, and consumption of fossil fuels have contributed to the potential for a global food crisis in the near future.
Censored #15
Food Riots: The New Normal

Just over two years since Egypt's dictator President Hosni Mubarak resigned , little has changed. Cairo's infamous Tahrir Square has remained a continual site of clashes between demonstrators and security forces, despite a newly elected president. It's the same story in Tunisia, and Libya where protests and civil unrest have persisted under now ostensibly democratic governments.

The problem is that the political changes brought about by the Arab spring were largely cosmetic. Scratch beneath the surface, and one finds the same deadly combination of environmental, energy and economic crises.

We now know that the fundamental triggers for the Arab spring were unprecedented food price rises. The first sign things were unravelling hit in 2008, when a global rice shortage coincided with dramatic increases in staple food prices, triggering food riots across the middle east, north Africa and south Asia. A month before the fall of the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)reported record high food prices for dairy, meat, sugar and cereals.

Since 2008, global food prices have been consistently higher than in preceding decades, despite wild fluctuations. This year, even with prices stabilising, the food price index remains at 210 – which some experts believe is the threshold beyond which civil unrest becomes probable. The FAO warns that 2013 could see prices increase later owing to tight grain stocks from last year's adverse crop weather.

Whether or not those prices materialise this year, food price volatility is only a symptom of deeper systemic problems – namely, that the global industrial food system is increasingly unsustainable. Last year, the world produced 2,241m tonnes of grain, down 75m tonnes or 3% from the 2011 record harvest.

The key issue, of course, is climate change. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10-20% drop in rice yields over the past decade. Last year, four-fifths of the US experienced a heatwave, there were prolonged droughts in Russia and Africa, a lighter monsoon in India and floods in Pakistan – extreme weather events that were likely linked to climate change afflicting the world's major food basket regions.

The US Department of Agriculture predicts a 3-4% food price rise this year – a warning that is seconded in the UK. Make no mistake: on a business-as-usual scenario, this is the new normal. Overall, global grain consumption has exceeded production in eight of the past 13 years. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40% because of climate change alone.

But climate is not the only problem. Industrial farming methods arebreaching the biophysical limits of the soil. World agricultural land productivity between 1990 and 2007 was 1.2% a year, nearly halfcompared with 1950-90 levels of 2.1%.

2008 also saw a shift to a new era of volatile, but consistently higher, oilprices. Regardless of where one stands on the prospects for unconventional oil and gas for ameliorating "peak oil", the truth is that wewill never return to the heyday of cheap petroleum.

High oil prices will continue to debilitate the global economy, particularly in Europe – but they will also continue to feed into the oil-dependent industrial food system. Currently, every major point in industrial food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. To make matters worse,predatory speculation on food and other commodities by banks drives prices higher, increasing profits at the expense of millions of the world's poor.

In the context of economies wracked by debt, this creates a perfect storm of problems which will guarantee high prices – eventually triggering civil unrest – for the foreseeable future.

It's only a matter of time before this fatal cocktail of climate, energy and economic challenges hits the Gulf kingdoms – where Saudi Arabia is struggling with an average total oil depletion rate of about 29%. If oil revenues reduce in coming years, this would lower subsidies for food and fuel. We've already seen how this can play out, for instance, in Egypt, whose domestic oil production peaked back in 1996, reducing government spending on services amid mounting debt.

The link between intensifying inequality, debt, climate change, fossil fuel dependency and the global food crisis is now undeniable. As population and industrial growth continue, the food crisis will only get worse. If we don't do something about it, according to an astounding new Royal Society paper, we may face the prospect of civilisational collapse within this century.

And of course, that is without taking into account the US Military's stated objective of 'Owning the Weather by 2025'; Chemtrails; HAARP; and the desire for 'Human Culling' via Wars, Famines and Pandemics.

We're all in for a rough ride, methinks._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

I was a paramedic. In these conditions, my knowledge was my wealth. Be
curious and skilled. In these conditions, the ability to fix things is more
valuable than gold.
http://www.hourofthetime.com/1-LF/One%20Year%20In%20Hell.pdf
Bosnia war survivor and 35 excuses that will doom the non-prepper.
Two important stories here (with links to original sources) that you need to read. The first is a report from a
man who survived the war in Bosnia. Although the source of this cannot be confirmed, the advice is
extremely valuable regardless.
The second story, appended to the bottom of this article, lists 35 excuses that will get you killed if you fail
to prepare for what's coming. This was originally published on SHTFplan.com and is sourced below.
Read both of these articles if you want to live.
Here's the first

BosniaWarSurvivor35ExcusesThatWillDoomTheNon-prepperneYearInHell.pdf

Description:

I was a paramedic. In these conditions, my knowledge was my wealth. Be curious and skilled. In these conditions, the ability to fix things is more valuable than gold.

Your link has - gone west - Fish - so here it is in a more permanent form

Glen Douglas Munitions Depot is located within Glen Douglas, which lies in the hills between Loch Lomond and Loch Long, and connects the two bodies of water by a largely single track road through the glen. The depot is a major installation, reported to be the largest weapons storage base in Western Europe operated by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).
Although classed as a NATO asset, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the sole user of the depot, which is a substantial facility occupying some 650 acres of land and employing 120 people. Some 56 storerooms are built into the hillside, together with a number of processing and engineering workshops. The depot's main function is the storage of high volumes of conventional weapons such as bombs, explosives, pyrotechnics, and ammunition, rather than the more sophisticated weapons stored and produced at depots such as Beith. Glen Douglas has the capacity to store almost 40,000 cubic metres of munitions, transported by rail and sea, with Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessels docking at Glenmallan on Loch Long. Transport between the loch and the depot is by private road, constructed for the purpose, and not shared with the public. The depot also supports a large fleet of lorries, which travel up to 400,000 miles a year, transporting munitions to bases throughout the UK.
The facility is regularly used by the British Armed Forces to stock up on munitions before the start of any conflict. In January 2003, the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal berthed at Glenmallan to collect munitions from the depot before heading for the Gulf and the war in Iraq. Two train drivers based in Motherwell were reported in the news when they refused to drive a freight train from Glasgow to Glen Douglas, forcing the MoD to transport the cargo by road.
Following the completion of Operation Telic (Iraq), Glen Douglas was used to store unused munitions from the campaign. Some 15,000 tonnes of munitions in 1,400 shipping containers passed through Glenmallan and Glen Douglas, and later by road and rail to munitions depots at Longtown near Carlisle, and Kineton in Warwickshire.
DSDA Glen Douglas provides responsive and efficient munitions storage, maintenance and distribution support to UK Armed Forces. Logistic activity covers a wide range of conventional munitions in support of mainly the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force by way of repairs to the HM Ships and in the refurbishment of aircraft bombs and bomb tails. Additionally, the site operates a deep-water explosive handling depot, which is linked to an extensive road and MoD rail facility.

Like most of us, you will have paid for something online, with your chip and pin or with a tap of your debit card. In fact, it’s likely that you’ll make transactions like this several times a day. Have you ever stopped to wonder: what if this system stopped working? What if you, and millions of others became unable to make payments, exchange funds or access your money?

It’s an eventuality that’s closer than we might care to think. Last year saw the beginnings of the "death of cash", as for the first time, shoppers made more electronic payments than cash payments. The majority of these electronic payments are facilitated by just a handful of institutions, on which the UK public is becoming extraordinarily reliant.

The big four banks occupy 75 per cent of the current accounts market, and if one of them was to fail, a huge chunk of money would suddenly drop out of circulation into thin air. The consequences would likely be catastrophic: cash machines, debit cards would all stop working, threatening the entire financial system with collapse.

It is this scenario that is keeping governments enthralled to the banks. As taxpayers we are on the hook to spend a fortune rescuing big banks, because letting them fail would mean that millions of people would lose access to their money.

However, this need not be the case if it was possible to free up this money from the big four banks. Just as if we withdrew our cash money, we must have the right to withdraw our digital money and handle it independently from banks. In short, the Bank of England could begin to issue digital cash.

Digital cash would be an electronic version of notes and coins, which is different from the money you use on your debit card because of the way it’s created. At the moment, out of all the money we use in the UK, only 3 per cent is in the form of cash. The other 97 per cent is money created by private banks when they make loans, which is in electronic form.

Digital cash provides a way to end too-big-to-fail by allowing people and companies to bypass the banks and pay each other directly using digital cash. This removes a significant amount of risk from the financial system as the big banks would no longer be the weak link in the chain.

The ability to make electronic payments is essential to modern life, but there are still 1 million people in the UK without a bank account. Since the big banks aren’t interested in providing payment services to cater to these excluded people, digital cash could allow a wave of tech startups or new ‘challenger banks’ to provide accounts to these people and increase financial inclusion.

So what is getting in the way of making this happen? Well, it is regulation - usually the enemy of banks getting their own way - that is protecting their control over the payments system.

Pete Stanford preps mainly for the event of a food or energy shortage, but if a nuclear attack strikes he's also ready

Olivia Blair @livblair a day ago

Illustration of a destroyed city Getty istock
All of us have probably experienced a fleeting thought - probably after watching Armageddon or The Day After Tomorrow – about what we would do in the event of a global disaster. Would we assemble loved ones and scramble into the car before heading for the hills via a gridlocked motorway? Or would we escape to a nearby natural safe place armed with blankets, water and long-lasting food?

These fleeting thoughts are normally followed with a shrug for most. However, for some, they have thought about these potential moments very carefully and have prepared thoroughly and accordingly.

Peter Stanford is a ‘prepper’ – someone who has made plans for a catastrophic event or disaster to ensure his survival.

Aged 50, Peter will not say where exactly in the south of England he lives “because there are a few stalkers out there”. He got into prepping from his career in personal training and life coaching

Britain's biggest fears revealed
10
show all
Fully aware that he might be perceived as a “bunch of nutters who all wear tin foil hats” , he jokes that he has all the descriptions of alien spaceships written down before assuring me that prepping can be even in the most low-key of circumstances and that more often than not preppers are just ensuring they will be covered if anything “disrupts their day to day living”.

“Some people would not label themselves as preppers but even those who put a shovel and blanket in the car are prepping,” he says.

Peter says there are three things preppers seek to ensure they have for if and when SHTF (Peter regularly uses abbreviations during our conversation and this one means “sh** hits the fan”) and they are: shelter, food and water.

peterstandford.jpg
(Pete Stanford)
“I’m not waiting for global conflict to happen yet it could do,” he says. “There is a lot of stuff going round at the moment because of Trump and Russia, whether that’s misinformation or true is besides the point. I know there are far more instantaneous things that could affect me which would need me to switch on prepper mode.”

So what are these instantaneous threats? One is due to the fact the UK imports more than half of its food, meaning something as simple as bad weather in another country could cut off some of the food supply. Peter says the recent ‘courgette crisis’ and lettuce shortage due to poor weather in southern Europe led some in the prepper community to question whether we were getting the whole story.

“As soon as a prepper sees something like that – we’re not paranoid – but we do think, ‘Ah, interesting. Let’s look into this’.”

Power cuts and fuel shortages (due to an oil crisis caused by conflict in the middle east, he suggests) are another area Peter is wary of so he never lets his petrol level get below three quarters full, just in case he needs to make a quick escape. He also has a bug-out bag, a bag containing essentials that would help you survive for around 72 hours.

He is also “as best as possible” prepped for some of the most severe threats:nuclear and chemical attacks. He owns an army-issued NBC (nuclear biological chemical) suit, gas mask and has plenty of escape routes handy.

“A lot of people say if there was a nuclear holocaust I would not want to live it but my attitude is never give up unless you are dead. That [slogan] has actually got me out of some dodgy situations, you have that drive to keep going. My philosophy is that I will do anything to keep going until I am on my last legs.”

Peter also has a “covert” spot in a rural location which is his escape destination should riots or attacks break out near where he lives.

“Because of its location, it is the last place a normal person would want to go to,” he says mysteriously. “If I needed to get out of my house and my life was at threat, I have a very nearby area I can go to… if I lived in a city, I would be limited and my choices would be much less.”

He actually has five planned locations which he would flee to, including one which his close family are aware of so that they could all meet up in the event of a catastrophe.

One of these locations involves his canoe which he has customised over two years so that he can solely survive on water if needs be.

petercanoe2-0.jpg
(Pete Stanford)
“I could live outdoors if that was the last-resort scenario. You are right next to the water and I have got ways of processing water so it is consumable. Plus anywhere where there is water you have wildlife so I would have my MREs (meals ready to eat).”

“It is not like I am waiting for the bad things to happen, it is just knowing they can. My mindset is switched on to seeing what is going on and seeing if that affects me, 99 per cent of the time I know I can carry on living normally but, if push comes to shove, it is not going to be the slightest bit of emotional effort or trauma for me to know what I have to do in these situations.”

Peter appears particularly sceptical and suspicious of the media and government - although he insists he is not an anarchist – and says he has friends at ‘homeland security’ who he hears things from.

“There’s a lot of things the British government have to say and do to make people feel as secure as possible. Because then if something was to happen, which did put people at risk because it wasn’t able to be sorted out, that is going to happen anyway. It is far better to make people feel comfortable leading up to a situation that might not actually happen.

“A lot of it we don’t actually hear about because if we did it would be included in every single piece of news, there would be nothing else included. Unless you go to find out about these things, you find out there are much more dangerous things going on which we don’t find out about in the media,” he claims.

So are dangerous events more likely to happen in present times? Peter seems to think so because there is more global political friction. Though those raised in the Cold War era of nuclear bomb shelters might beg to differ, Peter claims the advance of technology lends itself to bigger risks.

READ MORE
15 songs to soundtrack the end of the world
Armed trio caught stocking up at Walmart for Doomsday
Americans building doomsday bunkers in 'record numbers' since election
The doomsday shelters for the 1%
“People are getting more technically aware, so are terrorists and whoever the opposing factions are,” he warns.

He points to the rise of far right politics across Europe comparing it to fascism in Europe in the 1930s: “There are more pockets of these people around now because people can communicate easier which makes the group stronger.”

Prepping has commonly been a phenomenon more widely found in the United States, there is an American Preppers Network with an online forum for sharing survival techniques and gun techniques: “Prepping is a totally different culture over there because of their mindset to guns,” he says. A recent New Yorker article claimed some of the countries’ wealthiest people had begun looking into survival and prepping techniques.

petercanoe.jpg
(Pete Stanford)
Peter says he has certainly noticed an increase in the practice this side of the Atlantic attributing it mainly to the 2008 financial crisis saying people have become more sceptical of politicians, bankers and the elite.

“People tend to get more negative in their attitude to the system and then don’t trust it. Where people lost their homes after the financial crash, people are getting prepared.”

He begins to tell me that in a continued age of austerity, the thought of people suddenly losing their homes is frightening before immediately correcting himself: “Frightening is the wrong word. Fear doesn’t actually come into my vocabulary, the word is concerned." The only thing he is genuinely fearful of is losing his health, he says.

As we end the call he asks if I am going to get a “bug-out bag” now. Having already told me that being London-based I am in “major urbanville” with much more competition if I needed to survive – and the capital would also be a “target area” for a nuclear attack - it's given me something to think about, maybe I’ll buy an extra bottle of water and bag of crisps just in case.

More about: preppersdoomsdayReuse content
People Don't Know This Simple Way to Check if You Had PPI
The Claims Guys
Men: How to dress well without trying…
Fashion Insider
People Born Between 1941-1981 May Be Eligible for High Paid
Survey Compare
The Story Behind Your Surname Will Surprise You
Ancestry™
Never Put These 10 Foods in the Fridge
Better Daily Habits
by Taboola Sponsored Links
Scientists have found a whole new continent
The world’s first commercial flying car is now on sale
by Taboola
MOST POPULAR

Trump family’s trips dwarf Obama's annual travel costs

Historian says Trump presidency will be second shortest in history

We have forgotten about the work-hard, play-hard Generation X

Lindsay Lohan calls on Americans to support Donald Trump

Over 80 people died in Pakistan this week – where's the solidarity?
COMMENTS
Follow replies to my comments
Hello ThisWeek.org.uk(Logout)
62 Comments
SubscribeRSS

2 hours ago
Sgraglacious
Reading the headlines, I thought that this was yet another of the Independent's anti-Brexit raves.
ReplyShare0

3 hours ago
bruno
To plagiarise Ann Widdecombe " there is something of the night about the Independent. Its readers must end up depressed.
ReplyShare+3

3 hours ago
zzshift
Inflatable canoe is a bad choice...better to go for something less easily damaged and easy to repair. also easy target for snipers.
ReplyShare0

3 hours ago
Carol McPhee
In the event of a nuclear war the lucky ones die immediately...however prepped, the rest would starve and freeze in the decades of permanent winter. The really unlucky get radiation sickness and take a week to die....let's not go there.
ReplyShare+3

5 hours ago
maidstonemike
America also has a lot of these nutters.
ReplyShare+4

5 hours ago
The Philosopher
Armageddon when it comes will be a consequence of the Islamisation of the west. It will NOT be in this form.
ReplyShare-1

6 hours ago
No to fascist
Peter Stanford will no. be doing any of this when his flesh is burning from the radiaton and heat of a Iranian bomb. Pretend to be smart kafir
ReplyShare-6

7 hours ago
Endofdays
The main problem of surviving a cataclysmic disaster is that society will very quickly break down. We are too used to electricity, running water, flushing loos and the man from Ocado. Take that away and very quickly it all goes south.

If you can live off the land then you will have a head start. Few can and then they will become your problem. You will need to be able to defend yourself as there will be no law and order. So that means you will need weapons and be prepared to kill people. As a nation we've been cowered into not defending ourselves and relying on a policy and CJS to do so which it fails at every turn.

So I'm not sure that I would want to survive.
ReplyShare5 replies+1

6 hours ago
No to fascist
When the West is nukednuked this will leave the ME and Africa to repopulate your lands and peace across the land will happen. I look forward
ReplyShare2 replies-8

5 hours ago
Mr Paxton
You want the mass murder of millions and then claim to "look forward" to peace?

This is pure religious indoctrination at work . You are totally oblivious to the effects of it and hence believe that the mass murder of millions of people is an acceptable outcome and do not even ask yourself why.

This is really sickening.
ReplyShare+5

5 hours ago
maidstonemike
You are a twisted Islamist, mad as a hatter.
ReplyShare+4

5 hours ago
maidstonemike
You cannot live off the land after a nuclear war. It is unsurvivable.
ReplyShare1 reply+6

3 hours ago
Pyewacket
just to add, that there are areas of upland Britain still contaminated from the Chernobyl accident, which was nothing compared to a nuclear warhead detonating above your town or city.
ReplyShare0

11 hours ago
allways writing
if there was a nuclear holocaust, i would not want to survive it, if that is the right word. like dragon, i would like to be right underneath a bomb. incinerated to a shadow. all i would see would be a very bright light, i wouldn`t even feel anything. well, perhaps a tingle.
just think, a ball of metal the size of a grapefruit being able to destroy a city like london. it has a kind of magical beauty all of its own.
i would feel sorry for people not underneath the bomb but on its periphery. the kind of injuries would be horrendous.
i remember seeing the pilot of the enola gay bomber in a documentary about bombing hiroshima. he was as matter of fact as if talking about going on vacation, and, he said, i would do it all again. all of that crew, must have been picked for their psychological fitness, especially the bomb aimer. he had control of the aircraft and released it.
taking off was particularly hazardous, because of the extra weight, he went right to the end of the runway before taking off._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

some fascinating, mature discussion from my Facebook page
I think I'll start a new topic!

Asked whether “non-stop” sanctions could lead to World War 3, Putin quoted Albert Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”

.Can I ask a question? Once nukes are used, if they are used strategically, then the radiation will knock out all forms of infrared, WiFi, possibly even certain electrical power. Before World War 4 is considered with sticks and stones, do you think we might want to consider what will happen once the survivors of the nukes have to continue the fight of WWIII? If the leaders of America, or Russia or China etc hope to survive themselves, which they will, they will use the nukes strategically. The result will mean that the internet will shut down and the war will go back to traditional guns, knives and even swords. By the way, if they ever switch the internet back on after WWIII, you can guarantee the government will have full control over it. Control over the internet after WWIII is part of the plan for sure.

Don't you know what an electromagnetic pulse are, the EMP:s of all the nukes will blow all electronic equipment that are not protected. No electricity, no water, no cars, no heating, no food, no fuel, and no sunlight, everything is ticking with radiation.

TG
Excellent question Thomas James Russell. The trouble today is people don't like to explore such dark scenarios. They're getting closer and closer spreading unconscious angst like a virus in the public mind. The answer is DON'T DELAY. Do all the Internet research you can NOW before its gone and DON'T use Google. Use www.searx.me or another alternative. Even Webcrawler is better than using NSAsearch! Remember the Yanks deep state are basically the sophisticated modern version of Nazi Germany._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.

This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.

Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.

ADVERTISEMENT
Decline and Fall of America Book Ad 300x400

Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.

But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.

The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It chatters endlessly like 18th-century courtiers at the court of Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.

All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”

An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.

However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.

And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”

As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

As public anger and fear swells, Brexiteers give defensive media interviews. Some blame the chaos on the government’s failure to plan adequately. Others blame the EU for deliberately sabotaging the UK economy and demand retaliation. Others call for martial law

Ben Chu Economics editor
@Benchu_

At least 12 dead after 6.4-magnitude quake strikes Indonesian island
Spurs struck down by more injuries in penalty shootout defeat to Barca
Whyte survives Parker onslaught on brilliant night for British boxing
Thomas all but seals his Tour de France triumph after time trial
It’s Saturday 30 March 2019 and Britain has gone over the cliff edge.

At 11pm the night before the UK left the EU with no deal agreed. There is no financial liabilities settlement. There is no agreement on EU citizens’ rights or security cooperation. Britain is totally outside the customs union. There’s no single market “transition”.

Nor is there any route to a free trade deal. All Britain has to govern its trade with the EU now is the bare rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The government stockpiling medicine proves how disruptive Brexit is
May tells public not to worry about stockpiling food and medicine
Theresa May announces her resignation and the Conservative Party begins its leadership election process.

Nigel Farage is delighted at the last-minute collapse of the Brexit negotiations and declares outside parliament, as the dawn breaks, that Britain is now truly an independent nation once again.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, now the clear favourite for the Tory leadership having lead the successful campaign to thwart May’s proposed “vassalage” deal, informs BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that although what he describes as a “clean Brexit” will likely entail some “bumpiness” any disruption will be short-lived and ultimately well worth it.

Travellers are the first to feel the bump. UK airports are in chaos, as all flights to mainland Europe have been cancelled since late on Friday.

The WTO rules do not cover aviation. And no aircraft is permitted to fly between the UK and EU airports until a new bilateral agreement on flights is reached.

Weekend motorists in Kent are also suffering, as the roads leading to the ports of Dover and Folkestone soon become gridlocked with stationary lorries.

Each UK export consignment to Europe now has to be checked by customs staff in Calais, with tariffs and VAT collected.

The French port’s infrastructure is rapidly overwhelmed and ferry companies are instructed not to disgorge any more lorries until they can hire and train more officers.

The only option for hauliers bound for the EU is to queue and wait.

Hardliners in Germany, France and the Netherlands insist on no cooperation with the perfidious Brits whatsoever until they agree to honour their £39bn of EU liabilities
Traffic going the other way also locks up, as the UK’s small band of customs staff also soon become swamped, despite instructions for them to check only one incoming consignment from the EU in five.

By the end of the day, gaps are already starting to appear on UK supermarket shelves as shoppers, hearing about the customs crisis, stockpile goods, anticipating that deliveries from Europe will fail to arrive.

Some petrol stations are running low on fuel as tankers have difficulty getting through. Expecting a rush of panic buying, some profiteering operators jack up fuel prices on Sunday to as much as £1.50 a litre.

When the stock markets open on Monday, traders’ screens are drenched in red as UK stocks and investment funds get brutally marked down. Many find they cannot process orders on behalf of European clients due to the sudden demise of the single market passport for financial services.

Bank executives implement their contingency plans, informing thousands of employees that they will either be sacked or relocated to Frankfurt.

Lawyers are commissioned across the Square Mile for a gargantuan battle over trillions of pounds of derivative contracts whose legal status is now suddenly in doubt.

Despite an emergency rate cut and unprecedentedly large financial market liquidity injection from the Bank of England, panic takes hold in the City.

The pound is sinking at its most rapid rate since the night of that Leave vote in the Brexit referendum. One airport bureau de change offers to buy pounds for only a single dollar.

Theresa May dodges question on stockpiling ahead of Brexit
Car plant workers in the midlands and the north east arrive for work only to be told that half of them should go home. The parts they need to work with have not been delivered. They are stuck in transit and the “just in time” delivery system has broken down. The shockwaves ripple out to their thousands of supplier firms. Airbus announces it is closing down its entire plant in Wales, throwing 10,000 out of work at a stroke.

Despite months of stockpiling, many NHS drug deliveries are also held up. Non-urgent operations are cancelled indefinitely. All but the most sick are urged not to present themselves for treatment. One panicking manager of an overstretched hospital turns away a Spanish woman because, he says, as an EU citizen, her right to healthcare in the UK is now unclear. Others follow the precedent. The Madrid government declares that, in retaliation, retired Britons on the Costa del Sol will also be ineligible for Spanish healthcare.

Civil servants frantically hammer the phones, trying to get through to their European counterparts, pleading for the ports and airports to be opened, for emergency supplies to be fast-tracked, for some kind of temporary political agreement on the rights of EU citizens and Britons on the continent.

But the Europeans are divided. Hardliners in Germany, France and the Netherlands insist on no cooperation with the perfidious Brits whatsoever until they agree to honour their £39bn of EU liabilities. They are also consumed with the question of how to deal with Ireland, which has refused to close its border with the north for fear of provoking a Republican terror attack, leaving a gaping hole in the EU’s customs union.

As UK public anger and fear swells, Brexiteers give defensive media interviews. Some blame the chaos on the government’s failure to plan adequately.

Others blame the EU for deliberately sabotaging the UK economy and demand retaliation. Others call for martial law. Not one utters the words “project fear”._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum